Also too, watched Fox this morning. They said Obama has done a very very bad job in NY. NY is falling apart. Why is everything not fixed right now right now right now? So, how come you guys can get together at a bar eh? It must be you guys are Libtard DemoncRATs. Only the Obamabots have power right?
Also also too, MSNBC just said the chick who Broadwell sent the nasty emails is Jill Kelly(I think that’s what I heard) a married 37 year old Tampa woman who with her husband are friends with the Petraeus’

Damn, all I’ve got in the house is coffee. Can one or a few of you be my designated drinker? I tend toward red and harder by preference but aren’t unduly fussy, so no worries there. And if there aren’t some details you don’t want on the tuubz, you’re not trying hard enough. I have faith though.

Although I live in the city, I keep missing the NYC meetups for work-related reasons. So I figured I’d at least post a comment to that effect, in numinous hope that that slight gesture will somehow increase my likelihood of actually making it to the next one.

Been waiting since story broke to hear explanation of why Petraeus mistress would email anyone. And why that someone – now identified as Jill Kelley in Florida, whose twin sister is a lawyer for whistleblowers says Twitter – would call the FBI, and not first contact her – and allegedly also her husband’s – friend David. Friend first, not the FBI.

And why would anyone think to contact the FBI?

Any friend or mistress of the General would know security is key. Emailing by the mistress makes no sense. And bad General for picking a security breaching mistress, unless you just unconsciously want outtta the game.

@MazeDancer: A friend mentioned that mistresses are not concerned about the wife. They are threatened by others that might be younger and cuter.
After tsk tsking about the vulture media, I did go on the Tampa newspaper… and here’s the link. not sure whether he was having an affair with her though..
It’s probably understandable that Paula was jealous.

I think they are all real life Fox Mulder’s sister. After all, who would be in better position to know about Project X? He was boning all the alien hybrids, that’s why he had to resign when one went off the reservation. So to speak.
Dun dun duhhhhhh!!

The tabloidy part of this doesn’t interest as much as the WTF part. Like why mistress who went to West Point, knows security is paramount, has a husband, kids, and a book to sell, would go rogue. Something unbalanced there.

Why did the FBI and Eric Cantor get involved over emails? Cantor?

ETA: Hope all the lucky folks at McGee’s will solve this and all things for us.

Most importantly, why would the CIA Head even have a personal email? Isn’t that an invitation to security breach? Don’t think the President can have an non-secure email for that very reason.

Like why mistress who went to West Point, knows security is paramount, has a husband, kids, and a book to sell, would go rogue. Something unbalanced there.

People are not rational about affairs of the heart. Why would the head of the CIA, who knows how important security is, have an affair and share important information with his mistress? The best explanation is that they were thinking with their genitals, not their brains, which is conducive to making really dumb mistakes.

@MazeDancer: So many things don’t make sense in this story. For example, why did the FBI whistleblower contact Eric Cantor? Why is the president the last person to be informed? Also, allegedly, Ms. Broadwell had access to “sensitive information” but she will not be charged. WTF is going on?

@MikeJ: Unless you are special like D Petraeus, and have lots of press stenographers. Then, it is likely resign and all the charges go away.

My understanding is that as a General who has not resigned his commission, his affair was a violation under the UCMJ. So why is he not charged, whether he now resigns or not. He _DID_ it when he was still under that code.

But he is special, with lots of powerful friends. Like an honorary villager.

I know I wasn’t sorely missed, since DougJ once held me up as an example of everything that was wrong with liberalism, but I’m sorry I couldn’t make it. Have an excuse, though. My glasses opted to break today and I doubt people want some middle aged man leaning two inches away from their faces to get a good look at them. Also, the drivers of New York City probably don’t want me driving 10 mph down what I think might be the correct lane of the west side highway.

@cathyx: Huh? The edit function doesn’t even work for me. I never edited it. You may have misread it. I misread things all the time. It doesn’t make you a bad person if you did, but I never edited my comment.

@catclub: Normally, it’s not prosecuted. There was lots of fraternizing in Iraq and you really don’t want them to prosecute all of them. They need to get rid of that code. Just an opinion but I stand by it.

@JPL: They should drop it if they do not enforce it. That is the problem with laws that are typically not enforced. They are selectively enforced against people like … whistleblowers, or people who are not powerful.

Since we had our first cool weekend here in the Valley, I got into a baking mood. I’m making these Roasted Banana Bars and then G may make a Dump Cake with apple pie filling, spice cake, and butter. He makes the classic cherry-and-pineapple for office potlucks — people specifically request it.

@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: I generally enjoy the whole series but they get tiresome after a while.
McGee either deals with 90% regular people or 10% pure psychopathic murder killer guy. He runs cheesy word scams on the regular folks and then gets super lucky with the psychos.
And the way he deals with women is to take them fishing in the Keys, give them some Boodles and then some patient, deep dicking.

I love you, man! Pale Gray for Guilt is a great novel, regardless of genre. A classic of corporate evildoing. And my favorite, too.

I am anxiously awaiting the release (January 8) of all the Travis McGee novels for Kindle and Nook so I can load ’em up and go through them again. The early ones are a little pulpy, but there are some gems in there. You can see where Lee Child took copious notes for his Reacher novels.

(To those of us who grew up in a Catholic tradition where such tales were still common lore, the fact that Armistice/ Veterans Day fell on the feast of St. Martin, patron saint of soldiers, was poetically appropriate. He started as a soldier, because it was the family business, but the Prince of Peace appeared to him in a vision, so he walked away from enforcing the empire and embraced a different calling. Never did quite get control over his temper, though.)

Looooongtime lurker. It was nice to meet some actual people at McGee’s. Interesting how you can feel at home in a group you only know from a virtual community you don’t even directly participate in. I think that’s a sign of something good.

And the way he deals with women is to take them fishing in the Keys, give them some Boodles and then some patient, deep dicking.

Mr. McGee was a Plymouth man. He only switched to Boodles after they stopped bottling Plymouth in the UK.

McDonald had the corporate world pretty well pegged back in ’74…

At drinking time I left Meyer at the wheel and went below and broke out the very last bottle of the Plymouth gin which had been bottled in the United Kingdom. All the others were bottled in the U.S. Gin People, it isn’t the same. It’s still a pretty good gin but it is not a superb, stingingly dry, and lovely gin. The sailer on the label no longer looks staunch and forthright, but merely hokey. There is something self-destructive about Western technology and distribution. Whenever a consumer object is so excellent that it attracts a devoted following, some of the slide rule and computer types come in on their twinkle toes and take over the store, and in a trice they figure out just how far they can cut quality and still increase market penetration. Their reasoning is that it is idiotic to make and sell a hundred thousand units of something and make a profit of thirty cents a unit, when you can increase the advertising, sell five million units, and make a nickel profit a unit. Thus the very good things of the world go down the drain, from honest turkey to honest eggs to honest tomatoes. And gin.

I don’t think Obama has to use current Dem governors – there’s enough old ones around. Not sure why he’s asking Deval Patrick being that Patrick seems to want to run for Prez in 2016. He’s got the Wash. governor(can’t remember her name) , Schweitzer and Granholm. There’s also the old guy from Oregon9can’t remember his name either.)There’s some old retiring Senators. He’s got plenty of people to pick from.

There is a total solar eclipse on Wednesday morning and I’m about to board my flight to Cairns to go see it.

The only other eclipse I’ve ever seen was in Hawaii in 1992. Saying it was spectacular is like saying the moon landings were important. Words can’t descibe it and I’m yet to see a photo that captures it.

@Steeplejack: Well, this all inspired me to pull my Pale Gray off the bookshelf and yes, it’s (c) 1968.
I can’t remember if this is the entree of the Munequita or not. I guess I’ll read a bit and see if it fits my mood.

And if women were so amenable to massages and Gin I may rethink drinking the disgusting stuff.

Looking back at his selections from 2008, many of them seem so self-defeating. For example, by picking Janet Napolitano, he enabled Arizona to become such a weird state. And not only that, it meant wasting a lot of unnecessary time to fight their papers only law etc. That could have been avoided. I hope they have learned a lesson, although when I hear the talk about for Kerry for Sec of State I’m not so sure.

The “whistleblower” thing sounds like some right-wing ass covering since they were claiming yesterday that Congress had never been informed of the ongoing investigation. Now that it turns out Congress had been informed, the RW media trying to claim that Republicans in Congress weren’t officially informed.

IOW, your basic attempt at obfuscation to try and make Obama look bad, also known as a day that ends in “Y.”

@Steeplejack:
I knew an insurance investigator that found fraud in one of his cases. It was used for a Travis book. Of course, I can’t remember which one, but I’ll think of it.
I want those on the Nook.

@Paul: AZ was always going to go R in the electoral vote. As a national figure, he gained from letting them do all that crazy shit they did. He wasn’t going to win the state in 2012. But they sure as hell pissed off a fuckton of Hispanics/Latinos nationwide.
Jan Brewer and her bitch ass actions on the tarmac et al was the gift that kept on giving.

@Mnemosyne:
I skimmed the NYT article and Obama wasn’t told right away.
The article said they didn’t find a serious security breech.
This is one crazy story.
The emails on the CIA computer are just weird.
It gives me the willies.

It really was a different time. This was before–or right at the beginning of–the time when “crime fiction” commanded big advances, or even much respect. All of the Travis McGee novels were straight-to-paperback until the late ’60s or early ’70s, I believe.

And if you read them in the context of say, Ian Fleming’s Bond novels or Richard Stark’s Parker novels, Travis McGee is quite the gentleman. (Bond is a pig in the novels.) About the only one classier than McGee is Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer, and he’s a bit thin-blooded for some people’s taste.

@Paul: I am going to make an effort in future to not say this. Because what FOX does benefits democrats and harms republicans. Let them scream as much as they like. It sharpens our side and makes their side lazy.

FOX is far more profitable in opposition than when the GOP is in power. So they have very mixed motivations.

The Spenser series was a disappointment. Great start, and then he really started phoning them in. For years.

The last couple of Reacher novels show some structural cracks.

Right now I’m reading John Grisham’s The Racketeer. Don’t hate me! I saw him on Colbert a couple of weeks ago, and it reminded me that his early novels were really good. This one got good reviews, and about a third of the way through I’m liking it all right.

Gotta say that having a Nook (or Kindle) really takes the sting out of taking a chance on a new release. You don’t have to wait a year to get the paperback price.

@catclub: I swear, the timing on this whole thing gets funnier and funnier and funnier in the way too implausible for TV sort of way. Right before testimony to congress (him), right before a media enabled birthday party (her), right during an election, right before veterans day, etc etc etc with all the video and printed matter flying about. Some might smell conspiracy, I don’t care, it just proves there is no god because, seriously, it just strains credulity that even he would try to pull this one off.

The other ’60s series I picked up from my father, besides Travis McGee, was the Joe Gall novels by Philip Atlee. They were much pulpier, and I have no idea how they hold up, but it would be interesting to go back and try one.

I read all the Parker novels by Richard Stark (Donald E. Westlake) early this year, and they hold up pretty well. They are really drenched in their time. (Everybody’s a “heister.”)

I’ve read all those–well, except for the last one, Mission to Paris, which is sitting on the Nook. They’re good, but sometimes Furst goes so heavy on the atmosphere that he lets the story drop. I was really frustrated with the two-book set about the French film producer that ended (literally) with a knock on the door in the middle of the night. WTF?!

Spies of the Balkans was really good, so I’m looking forward to Mission to Paris. I think The Polish Officer is my favorite.

@Steeplejack:
Have you read Reginal Hill?
He dies recently and was a great writer.
I read a lot of crime fiction.
Spencer and Haw ended up being cold blooded killers.
The replacement for Parker is the same claptrap.
Charles Todd, Ian Rutledge series is good, The nurse one is yek.
The Ian Rankin compliance officers books are excellent. There are two of them.

I’ve been reading it in short bursts and am only to the point where the protagonist is about to make his deal and get out of jail. I am waiting on the big surprise plot twist. Maybe that will be underwhelming. (No spoilers, please!)

I haven’t read any of Reginald Hill’s books in a long time. Should (re)investigate. I liked the early Charles Tood novels but lost the thread a few novels ago. I liked Inspector Rebus but have read only the first of the compliance officer books. I liked it, though.

For people who like their fiction hard-boiled, take a look at the Hard Case Crime series of books. It’s a combination of re-issues and originals and they’ve got some really fun stuff.

G is pissed because they went over to e-books hardcover and trade paperbacks when he had a nice set of them all lined up on his bookshelf.

(Had to correct myself — G says they changed publishers and switched from mass market publication to hardcover and trade paperbacks, so now the pricing is wildly inconsistent. He belonged to the club where you got each paperback for $4.)

@Steeplejack: With your film forte you have never read Matt Helm?!
He’s a little too clever for his own good but still a few good reads when the cold winds are blowing outside.

I still, without reservation, suggest Len Deighton’s triple tri-part series with Bernard Samson. My all time favorite and it gets better every time I read it.
It’s not light fare like Helm Or Travis McGee but it’s not chewing through like le Carre or that other schmoo I can’t think of right now.